Month: October 2021

Actor William Shatner, best known for his portrayal of space explorer Captain James T. Kirk in the “Star Trek” television series, announced he will travel to space later this month. Shatner, 90, will blast off October 12 aboard a Blue Origin rocket. Blue Origin is…

Pope Francis and other religious leaders made a joint appeal on Monday for next month's U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP26) to offer concrete solutions to save the planet from "an unprecedented ecological crisis". The "Faith and Science: Towards COP26" meeting brought together Christian leaders including…

US scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian on Monday won the Nobel Medicine Prize for discoveries on receptors for temperature and touch, the jury said. "The groundbreaking discoveries... by this year's Nobel Prize laureates have allowed us to understand how heat, cold and mechanical force…

 A British company says it has developed an easy-to-administer, saliva-based test that can detect whether a person is infectious enough to pass along the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The company, Vatic, said in a statement that its test is “extremely accurate” and has not returned…

“The pandemic has destabilized societies, economies, and governments. It has shown that there is no global security without global health security,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a recent address to ambassadors and representatives to the European Union’s political and security committee.…

A joint European-Japanese spacecraft got its first glimpse of Mercury as it swung by the solar system's innermost planet while on a mission to deliver two probes into orbit in 2025.  The BepiColombo mission made the first of six flybys of Mercury at 11:34 p.m.…

In a normal year, the smokehouses and drying racks that Alaska Natives use to prepare salmon to tide them through the winter would be heavy with fish meat, the fruits of a summer spent fishing on the Yukon River like generations before them.  This year,…

Delegates heading to the COP26 U.N. climate summit in Glasgow agreed they must deliver on the $100 billion per year pledge to help most vulnerable nations tackle climate change, COP26 president Alok Sharma said on Saturday.   Speaking after days of meetings at the pre-COP26…

The abortion rights battle takes to the streets across America Saturday, with hundreds of demonstrations planned as part of a new "Women's March" aimed at countering an unprecedented conservative offensive to restrict the termination of pregnancies.   The fight has become even more intense since…

Droughts that cause leaves to turn brown and wither before they can reach peak color. Heat waves prompting leaves to fall before autumn even arrives. Extreme weather events like hurricanes that strip trees of their leaves altogether. For a cheery autumnal activity, leaf peeping is…

At the virtual COVID-19 summit on the margins of the U.N. General Assembly last week, U.S. President Joe Biden announced an additional donation of 500 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine to low-income and lower-middle-income countries, bringing total U.S. pledged donations to 1.1 billion shots.…

The U.S. is the global leader in vaccine donations, pledging to send 1.1 billion doses to help the world fight the COVID-19 pandemic. But it has shipped only 15% of the doses it has promised. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report. Producer:…

The United States has surpassed 700,000 deaths from COVID-19, the highest of any country. The U.S. recorded 700,258 deaths Friday evening, according to data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Brazil has the second-highest number of deaths, with 597,255. India has 448,339; Mexico, 277,507;…

Members of the White House COVID-19 Response Team said Friday that recent trials showing the effectiveness of the U.S. drug company Merck's experimental new COVID-19 pill were certainly good news, but they stressed that vaccines would remain the best way to end the pandemic.    During…

A joint mission of the European and Japanese space agencies, the spacecraft BepiColombo is set to make a close, initial flyby of Mercury on Friday as part of a seven-year mission to put two probes in orbit around the solar system's closest planet to the…

The U.S. government says it wants to partner with African countries to combat climate change. A U.S. climate envoy, who is in South Africa to prepare for a key conference next month, said the fight must be an international one. "These kinds of damages do…

Geneticists, led by Harvard Medical School's George Church, aim to bring the woolly mammoth back to life by 2027. But some experts aren’t sure it’s such a good idea. Karina Bafradzhian has the story. ...

As COVID-19 has spread in Nigeria, Africa's most populated country, so have myths about the virus, especially among children. A Nigerian author has written a children's book to help them understand the pandemic and ways to avoid being infected. A team of educators arrives at…

Australia will reopen its international borders in November to allow vaccinated travelers into the country for the first time in 18 months. Australia banned most foreign nationals in March of last year and required its citizens to seek official permission to leave the country. Now…